Evelyn Evelyn

This debut graphic novel effort by musicians Palmer and Webley, tying in with their musical effort, is perhaps best described as the American McGee’s Alice action game of conjoined twin stories—finding an adequate comparison within the genre is difficult. It tells the tale of Eva and Lynn (shortly thereafter, Evelyn and Evelyn) Neville, whose mother’s death in childbirth is only the first in a series of bizarre tragedies that govern the existence of these two sisters who share between them “three legs, two arms, two hearts, three lungs, and one liver.” Their nightmarish journey takes them from a makeshift birthing clinic on the Kansas-Colorado border to a chicken farm outside of Claxton, Ga., to the depravity of Underwood Lodge on Lake Winnipeg and the bizarre world of Dillard and Fullerton’s Illusive and Illogical Traveling Show. This is a graphic novel that needs to be experienced, and with von Buhler’s stunning, dark but clever illustrations, this phantasmagorical journey is a memorable one. Indeed, the story serves as an insightful metaphor about the dark corners of human experience, and, perhaps more importantly, the small slivers of light that illuminate them. (Oct.)